Spam

The CAN-SPAM Act: Requirements for Commercial Emailers

Effective January 1, 2004

What the Law Requires

Here's a rundown of the law's main provisions:

It bans false or misleading header information. Your email's "From," "To," and routing information - including the originating domain name and email address - must be accurate and identify the person who initiated the email.

It prohibits deceptive subject lines. The subject line cannot mislead the recipient about the contents or subject matter of the message.

It requires that your email give recipients an opt-out method. You must provide a return email address or another Internet-based response mechanism that allows a recipient to ask you not to send future email messages to that email address, and you must honor the requests. You may create a "menu" of choices to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to end any commercial messages from the sender.

It requires that commercial email be identified as an advertisement and include the sender's valid physical postal address. Your message must contain clear and conspicuous notice that the message is an advertisement or solicitation and that the recipient can opt out of receiving more commercial email from you. It also must include your valid physical postal address.
- Source: FTC's CAN-SPAM webpage.

FTC Revises Compliance Rules for Can SpamThe Federal Trade Commission has approved several changes to Can Spam regulations concerning compliance requirements for opting out of email lists.

New rules prohibit charging fees to opt out of email lists, or requiring individuals to provide any more information other than their email address and opt out preferences.

The changes also specify that individuals seeking to opt out of lists must be able to accomplish this task by simply sending a reply email message or by visiting a single Web page.

Another revision now allows email senders to use postal addresses and P.O. boxes as return addresses.- Source: Direct Magazine

According to Symantec, 16 million phishing messages arrive in subscribers' inboxes every day. Even more concerning, 50 percent are opened and 10 percent are clicked on. - ClickZ "4 Ways to Prepare for the Future of the Inbox" (2014)

"This-is-Spam" rates for brands sending more often than once-a-week were nearly 20% lower than for weekly senders. - ReturnPath "The Email Subscriber Experience 2008-2013" (2013)

13.6% of personalized messages were delivered as spam. Only 3.6% of emails with no personalization were delivered as spam. - ReturnPath "The Email Subscriber Experience 2008-2013" (2013)

3.0% of emails were delivered as spam when the brand led with a special offer; 4.7% were delivered as spam when the brand did not lead with a special offer. - ReturnPath "The Email Subscriber Experience 2008-2013" (2013)

Of those who do not require double opt-in, 4.1% of emails were delivered as spam and received a 0.027% complaint rate. Those that required a double opt-in had 3.6% of emails delivered as spam and a 0.014% complaint rate. - ReturnPath "The Email Subscriber Experience 2008-2013" (2013)

70% of subscribers opt out when they lose interest in marketing messages. Another 14% will just delete the email each time, and 9% will hit the “Report Spam” button hoping to make the offending email go away. - Acxiom "Email Marketing and Mobile Devices: A Survey of Consumer Habits and Perceptions" (2013)

70 percent of “this is spam” complaints from recipients are actually legitimate newsletters, offers or notifications that people are no longer interested in receiving. - Return Path "Email Intelligence Report Q3 2012" (2012)

40% of US and UK Internet Users said the reason for not regularly opening/reading email marketing messages is that they consider the message to be spam.-e-Dialog "Manifesto for E-mail Marketers: Consumer Demand Relevance" (2010)

22% of US Internet users consider messages they once requested but no longer want to be spam. - Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (2010)

4% of retailers are not in compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act. That's on par with 2008 levels.- Smith-Harmon "Retail Email Unsubscribe Benchmark Study" (2010)

39% of major online retailers require three or more clicks to opt-out, up from 7% in 2008. - Smith-Harmon "Retail Email Unsubscribe Benchmark Study" (2010)

30% of retailers send one or more emails following an unsubscribe request, up from 26% in 2008.- Smith-Harmon "Retail Email Unsubscribe Benchmark Study" (2010)

Image-based spam first hit 5 to 10 percent of all spam in March of 2009 before sky rocketing to 15-22 percent in April - Computer World (2010)

Spam has increased over 141% since March and also found that spam volumes grow by over 117 billion e-mails a day/ -Return Path "Top Email Trends in 2009" (2010)

94% of all email sent through servers is considered spam. - Postini (2009)
21% of all respondents said they use the "report spam" button to unsubscribe even though the email is not technically spam. - MarketingSherpa "Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2008" (2008)

39% of all respondents said they used the "report spam" button often or very often. - MarketingSherpa "Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2008" (2008)

7% of the companies surveyed continued to send messages after 10 days (from which they opted out of their email program), which is a violation of the federal Can-Spam Act. - Silverpop (2007)

30% of the companies surveyed continued to send messages for several days to people after they opted out of their programs. - Silverpop (2007)

Inbox providers, such as Yahoo, AOL and Gmail, all use the percentage of people who hit the "report spam" button for a particular sender as the No. 1 gage in considering whether to deliver incoming email to users' inboxes or not. - Direct Magazine (2007)

By all accounts, any sender who gets a complaint rate higher than 0.5% will have serious delivery issues at these ISPs. - Direct Magazine (2007)

53% say they received less spam than they did last year -- the third consecutive year in which most respondents reported a reduction. - Epsilon (2007)

30% say they use spam complaint mechanisms, while two-thirds of them equate reporting spam with unsubscribing from marketers' email programs. - Epsilon (2007)

20 percent of respondents admit to using the "report spam" button to unsubscribe. - Email Sender and Provider Coalition (2007)

More than 8 out of 10 email users have used the "report spam" button in their email clients' interfaces. - Email Sender and Provider Coalition (2007)

Nine out of 10 email users want a universal "unsubscribe" button in their email clients' interfaces, one that would send an unsubscribe request from the receiving email server to the sender's database. - Email Sender and Provider Coalition (2007)

The Spam epidemic is costing U.S. businesses $712 for each employee in lost worker productivity. - Nucleus Research (2007)

Two out of every three email messages received by today's business users are spam. - Nucleus Research (2007)

Users are spending 16 seconds identifying and deleting each spam email, which translates into an annual cost of $70 billion to all U.S. businesses. - Nucleus Research (2007)